Czechoslovakia, Social Aspects, Dwellings, Architecture, Modern, Architects, Modern--Social aspects, Families, Exiles 

On honeymoon in Venice in 1929, Viktor and Liesel Landauer face a new world when they meet brilliant architect Rainer von Abt. Soon, on a hillside near a provincial Czech town, the Landauer House with its celebrated Glass Room will become von Abt's greatest work, a modernist masterpiece in glass and steel, with travertine floors and onyx walls, filled with light and optimism. But while Viktor's beautiful wife is Aryan, he is Jewish, and so when Nazi troops arrive the family must flee. Yet their exile is not the end of the spectacular building. It slips from hand to hand, from Czech to Nazi to Soviet and finally to the Czechoslovak state, the crystalline perfection of the Glass Room always exerting a gravitational pull on those who know it. It becomes a laboratory, a shelter from the storm of war, and a place where the broken and the ruined find some kind of comfort until, with the collapse of Communism, the Landauers can finally return to where their story began.  

* Inspired by a real house, an amazing modernist symbol, Simon Mawer has written his best novel yet, a story guaranteed to dazzle and intrigue the reader 

Genre/Form: Domestic fiction
Fiction
Material Type: Fiction
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Simon Mawer
ISBN: 9780349121321 034912132X
OCLC Number: 682894298
Awards: Short-listed for Walter Scott Prize 2010 (UK)
Short-listed for Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize 2010 (UK)
Short-listed for Man Booker Prize 2009 (UK)
Long-listed for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2011 (UK)
Description: 405 pages : illustrations
Responsibility: Simon Mawer.